The 2019 Arsies: February 15, 2019

February 15, 2019

Emotion	●●○	●●●
Memorability	●●●	●●●
Replayability	●●●	●●●
Innovation	●●●	●●○
Pace	●●●	●●●
Shredding	●●●	●●●
Vocals	●●●	●●●
Production	●●●	●●●

Holy hell, it finally happened: the Blake Richardson/Danny Walker drummer showdown of my dreams! Blake wins the cointoss, and crams as many fills, patterns, rudiments, flams, and flourishes into 74 minutes as he can. Danny fires back with a mastery that is slightly less showy, yet undeniably potent. Blake works more of his kit throughout, while Danny is arguably more proficient with syncopation and odd time signatures. Blake's performance triumphs over the heart; Danny's, the mind.
Oh right. You want to know about the albums. Well... as go the drummers, so go their respective albums. The Direction Of Last Things has a slight edge in terms of its cleverness and innovation (even if some of those innovations are lifted outright from King Crimson's playbook). On the other hand, Parallax 2 is clearly the more emotive album of the two. Otherwise, the contest seems destined to be a draw. And yet, to me it's always more important to make the music move the listener than make the listener think. Curious thing to say in the face of two prog metal masterpieces, I know, but at the end of this day, Intronaut win the cerebral battle, but lose the war to Between The Buried And Me.
This means that Monday, our last match, will be between TesseracT and BTBAM. Keep in mind that this is for My Favorite Album Of The Last Ten Years. I am absolutely going to struggle over this one. And, right now, I really don't know who's going to win. Do you?